How can I export an Adobe Connect recording as a video?

Question

I have links to recorded conferences, how can I export video from them?

Answer 1

I wrote this Python script to export an Adobe Connect recording as a video:

'''
Requirements:
- python 2.7 or 3
- wget, unzip, and ffmpeg accessible from command line.

Examples:
python connect2vid_v2.py https://my.adobeconnect.com/pqc06mcawjgn/  --output_filename=" Understanding how the Network impacts your service"

Please email Franck Dernoncourt  if you improve this code.
'''

import shlex
import subprocess
import os
import glob
import argparse
import sys
import re


def run_command(command):
    print('running command: {0}'.format(command))
    process = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split(command), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    while True:
        output = process.stdout.readline()
        print(output.strip())
        if output == b'' and process.poll() is not None:
            print('Done running the command.')
            break
        if output:
            print(output.strip())
    rc = process.poll()
    return rc

def create_folder_if_not_exists(directory):
    '''
    Create the folder if it doesn't exist already.
    '''
    if not os.path.exists(directory):
        os.makedirs(directory)

def extract_connect_id(parser, args):
    '''
    Function written by Aaron Hertzmann
    '''
    # ----- extract the connectID or ZIP file  -----

    if len(args.URLorIDorZIP) < 1:
    #    print('Error: No Connect recording URL provided.')
        parser.print_help()
        sys.exit(0)

    if args.URLorIDorZIP[0][-4:].lower() == '.zip':
        sourceZIP = args.URLorIDorZIP[0]
        connectID = os.path.basename(sourceZIP[:-4])
    elif len(args.URLorIDorZIP[0]) == 12:
        connectID = args.URLorIDorZIP[0]
    else:
        s = args.URLorIDorZIP[0].split('/')
        connectID = None
        for i in range(len(s)-1):
            if 'adobeconnect.com' in s[i]:
                connectID = s[i+1]
                break
        if connectID == None:
            print("Error: couldn't parse URL")
            sys.exit(1)

    return connectID


def main():
    '''
    This is the main function
    '''

    # ================ parse the arguments (part of the parsing code was written by Aaron Hertzmann) ======================

    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Download an Adobe Connect recording and convert to a video file.')
    parser.add_argument('URLorIDorZIP', nargs='*', help='URL, code, or ZIP file for the Connect recording')
    parser.add_argument('--output_folder',default='output_videos',help='Folder for output files')
    parser.add_argument('--output_filename',default='noname', help='output_filename')
    args = parser.parse_args()

    #main_output_folder = "all_videos"
    main_output_folder = args.output_folder
    output_filename = args.output_filename
    output_filename =  re.sub(r'[^\w\s]','', output_filename)
    output_filename = output_filename.replace('@', '').strip()
    print('output_filename: {0}'.format(output_filename))
    connect_id = 'pul1pgdvpr87'
    connect_id = 'p6vwxp2d0c2f'
    connect_id = extract_connect_id(parser, args)
    video_filename = 'hello'
    video_filename = output_filename

    # ================ Download video  ======================
    output_folder = connect_id
    output_zip_filename = '{0}.zip'.format(connect_id)
    create_folder_if_not_exists(output_folder)
    create_folder_if_not_exists(main_output_folder)

    # Step 1: retrieve audio and video files
    connect_zip_url = 'https://my.adobeconnect.com/{0}/output/{0}.zip?download=zip'.format(connect_id)
    wget_command = 'wget -nc -O {1} {0}'.format(connect_zip_url, output_zip_filename) # -nc, --no-clobber: skip downloads that would download to existing files.
    run_command(wget_command)
    unzip_command = 'unzip -n {0} -d {1}'.format(output_zip_filename, output_folder) # -n: Unzip only newer files.
    run_command(unzip_command)

    # Step 2: create final video output
    cameraVoip_filepaths = []
    for filepaths in sorted(glob.glob(os.path.join(output_folder, 'cameraVoip_*.flv'))):
        cameraVoip_filepaths.append(filepaths)
    print('cameraVoip_filepaths: {0}'.format(cameraVoip_filepaths))

    screenshare_filepaths = []
    for filepaths in sorted(glob.glob(os.path.join(output_folder, 'screenshare_*.flv'))):
        screenshare_filepaths.append(filepaths)

    part = 0
    output_filepaths = []
    for cameraVoip_filepath, screenshare_filepath in zip(cameraVoip_filepaths, screenshare_filepaths):
        output_filepath = os.path.join(main_output_folder, '{0}_{1:04d}.flv'.format(video_filename, part))
        #output_filepath = '{0}_{1:04d}.flv'.format(video_filename, part)
        output_filepaths.append(output_filepath)
        # ffmpeg command from Oliver Wang / Yannick Hold-Geoffroy / Aaron Hertzmann
        conversion_command = 'ffmpeg -i "%s" -i "%s" -c copy -map 0:a:0 -map 1:v:0 -shortest -y "%s"'%(cameraVoip_filepath, screenshare_filepath, output_filepath)
        # -y: override output file if exists
        run_command(conversion_command)
        part += 1

    # Concatenate all videos into one single video
    # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7333232/how-to-concatenate-two-mp4-files-using-ffmpeg
    video_list_filename = 'video_list.txt'
    video_list_file = open(video_list_filename, 'w')
    for output_filepath in output_filepaths:
        video_list_file.write("file '{0}'\n".format(output_filepath))
    video_list_file.close()
    final_output_filepath = '{0}.flv'.format(video_filename)
    # ffmpeg command from Oliver Wang / Yannick Hold-Geoffroy / Aaron Hertzmann
    conversion_command = 'ffmpeg -safe 0 -y -f concat -i "{1}" -c copy "{0}"'.format(final_output_filepath, video_list_filename)
    run_command(conversion_command)
    #os.remove(video_list_filename)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
    #cProfile.run('main()') # if you want to do some profiling

---

Explanation on how the script works:

Assume that the Adobe Connect ID is p6vwxp2d0c2f, i.e. the URL is https://my.adobeconnect.com/p6vwxp2d0c2f. You can add /output/p6vwxp2d0c2f.zip?download=zip at the end of the URL to download some zip archive containing a bunch of audio and video files as well as some .xml files. E.g., https://my.adobeconnect.com/p6vwxp2d0c2e/output/p6vwxp2d0c2e.zip?download=zip could contain:

 Directory of C:\Users\[...]\p6vwxp2d0c2f

02/09/2019  11:27 AM              .
02/09/2019  11:27 AM              ..
02/09/2019  11:00 AM        52,239,473 cameraVoip_1_11.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         1,364,573 cameraVoip_1_11.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         7,176,904 cameraVoip_1_15.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           188,012 cameraVoip_1_15.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             6,004 cameraVoip_1_3.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,698 cameraVoip_1_3.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM        62,603,505 cameraVoip_1_7.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         1,625,383 cameraVoip_1_7.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             2,249 ftcontent1.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             8,219 ftcontent1.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM            25,685 ftcontent13.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM            85,464 ftcontent13.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           199,781 ftcontent5.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           657,091 ftcontent5.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           182,297 ftcontent9.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM           601,758 ftcontent9.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle0.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,272 fttitle0.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle12.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,298 fttitle12.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle4.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,290 fttitle4.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             1,354 fttitle8.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM             3,298 fttitle8.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         1,815,158 indexstream.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         7,703,603 indexstream.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM         5,316,597 mainstream.flv
02/09/2019  11:00 AM        21,259,001 mainstream.xml
02/09/2019  11:00 AM       217,448,561 screenshare_2_10.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM         1,364,572 screenshare_2_10.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM        32,364,457 screenshare_2_14.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM           188,011 screenshare_2_14.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM           387,981 screenshare_2_2.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM             1,698 screenshare_2_2.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM       237,470,572 screenshare_2_6.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM         1,625,385 screenshare_2_6.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM                48 telephony-files.xml
02/09/2019  11:01 AM               691 transcriptstream.flv
02/09/2019  11:01 AM             2,391 transcriptstream.xml
              39 File(s)    653,935,396 bytes
               2 Dir(s)   1,590,358,016 bytes free

• cameraVoip__.xml contains the audio + webcam if any.
• screenshare__.xml contains the audio + webcam if any.

To merge them, you can use ffmpeg (I took the ffmpeg commands from Oliver Wang / Yannick Hold-Geoffroy / Aaron Hertzmann):

ffmpeg -i cameraVoip_1_11.flv -i screenshare_2_10.flv -c copy -map 0:a:0 -map 1:v:0 -shortest output.flv

where:

• -map 0:a:0: map the first input file to be used just for the audio.
• -map 1:v:0: map the second input file to be used just for the video.
• -shortest: cut the audio or video in case cameraVoip_1_11.flv and screenshare_2_10.flv don't have the same length.

If you want to keep the webcam video and place it in some corner of the video screen sharing:

ffmpeg -i cameraVoip_1_11.flv -i screenshare_2_10.flv  \
                         -filter_complex \
                         "color=s=1072x480:c=black [base]; [0:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=640x480 [upperleft]; [1:v] setpts=PTS-STARTPTS, scale=432x240 [upperright]; [base][upperleft] overlay=shortest=1 [tmp1]; [tmp1][upperright] overlay=shortest=1:x=640" \
                         -c:v libx264 -c:a mp2 output.mkv

---

Regarding mapping the cameraVoip__.xml to the correct screenshare__.xml, in case there is more than one:

One could look at the cameraVoip__.xml / screenshare__.xml to get the timestamps of when the audio / screen share video began. This allows to map the screenshare__.xml with the correct cameraVoip__.xml.

E.g., in https://my.adobeconnect.com/p6vwxp2d0c2f/output/p6vwxp2d0c2f.zip?download=zip, from cameraVoip_1_11.xml, line 21:

Otherwise, another way could be to sort cameraVoip__.xml / screenshare__.xml, then map the first cameraVoip__.xml with the first screenshare__.xml, the second cameraVoip__.xml with the first screenshare__.xml, etc. I don't know if it'd break in some cases (seems to be ok for the couple of Adobe Connect recordings I looked at but perhaps that's because people always share screens).